


Honey, It Will Come Back

by Flyting



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Body Horror, Comes Back Wrong, Horror, Huxloween, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Kylo you done fucked up, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Necromancy, Seriously Creepy Hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 22:12:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8226404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: Something was wrong with the general. Ever since the Resistance attack on their Axaca base, he had been… different. Not himself.  He is brighter and more vicious. There has always been an edge to him, a tension, but something has filed it sharp. He talks louder, smiles more, is full of an energy that borders on manic. At first, some of the command staff joke that he’s fallen in love.Or, Hux Comes Back Wrong. For the Huxloween Prompt: Transformation





	

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for character death warnings.

Something was wrong with the general.

Ever since the Resistance attack on their Axaca base, he had been… different. Not himself.

He is brighter and more vicious. There has always been an edge to him, a tension, but something has filed it sharp. He talks louder, smiles more, is full of an energy that borders on manic. At first, some of the command staff joke that he’s fallen in love.

The jokes die off, one by one, as it becomes clear that whatever is wrong with General Hux runs far deeper than that.  
  
The first indicator was the smell.

General Hux had a reputation for being a fastidious man, all crisp lines, never a hair out of place, but ever since Axaca there was a smell that seemed to follow him around. It was a sharp, sour odor like rotten meat. No one had yet mustered up the nerve to address it. It smelled like something that had died.

There are other things too. Small things, which are noticed by his crew in a hundred insignificant ways.

Officer Thanisson has noticed the general’s work schedule. It’s part of his job- making out the shift rosters for the bridge crew. It isn’t hard. He simply switches out officers and pilots as part of a regular cycle, ensuring that everyone gets their allotted time off. It’s mindless intern work, the kind that needs to be done but it won’t really hurt anything if it isn’t done well, which is why it falls to him. Most of the bridge crew know their schedules by heart at this point anyway.

It’s several days before Thanisson notices what has been bothering him about the shift rosters lately. He is archiving them, as he does periodically for record-keeping and budget purposes. More intern-work, which rolls downhill onto the junior officers, but General Hux is big on proper documentation and Thanisson doesn’t mind, since it gives him something simple and unthinking to do at the end of his shifts as he mentally prepares to go off-duty.

Five times a day, at the end of every shift, the senior officer on the bridge signs off on the roster. It’s mechanical procedure at this point. The crew of the _Finalizer_ runs like a well-oiled machine, and the bridge crew most of all. The timestamps at the bottom of the file have never even registered with him.

Until suddenly one does.

It is fifteen minutes until the end of his shift, and Thanisson has just completed his archiving when something nags at him. He reopens the most recent files, glancing through them. At the bottom of the current shift, there is General Hux’s timestamp.

Thanisson darts a glance at the general, who cuts a dark figure, black clothes and pale skin almost luminescent against the endless void visible through the viewport.

His approval is on the roster for the shift before this one, too- beta shift. Expected. Two shifts on, three shifts off was the usual work cycle.

Thanisson checks back farther, a part of him somehow already knowing what he’ll find before he sees it: General Hux’s approval on the roster for alpha shift as well.

It wasn’t uncommon for the senior officers to put in longer hours than the rest of them. Still, fifteen hours on duty was exhausting. It was impressive the general was still as sharp as he was. Though, come to think of it, Thanisson cannot remember if he’s said a word all shift.

But then there _had_ to be some kind of mistake, because the general had signed off on the previous shift as well. And the one before that.

Dread pooling in his stomach, Thanisson cross-references the archives with the original files- he must have made an error in recording them, there’s no other possibility- simple transcription error, embarrassing, but far more logical than the alternative-

The original files are identical to the archived copies in every respect.

 _Twelve shifts_ \- it was impossible for anyone, even General Hux, to work _twelve shifts_ in a row without falling over dead somewhere. That was _sixty hours_. Even the general needed to _sleep._

He is still puzzling over this, his brow furrowed in a sharp frown, as he slowly becomes aware of an unfamiliar sound on the bridge. It has been going on for a while, he realizes, but it’s taken this long to penetrate the thick cloud of his confusion.

_Click-click-click-click-_

_Click-click-click-click-_

It’s a sharp, rhythmic sound, like somebody cracking their knuckles or drumming sharp fingernails on a desktop. _Click-click-click-click-_ one-two-three- _four._

Thanisson tries to look around surreptitiously, and notices that he isn’t the only one doing so. All of the other quiet little sounds of the bridge- muttered status updates and shifting chairs and boots scuffing on durasteel- have slowly died off as everyone tries to figure out who the offender is. In the gaping vacuum of sound created by several dozen sets of ears listening intently, everyone is trying to figure out who among them wasn’t going to be showing up for work tomorrow.

_Click-click-click-click-_

General Hux _hated_ unnecessary noise. There were rumors that he’d once shot a lieutenant for habitually breathing too loudly.

Thanisson glances around, catching Lieutenant Mitaka’s eye and the two of them exchange a look of urgent confusion.

_Click-click-click-click-_

_Click-click-click-click-_

It was strange the general hadn’t heard it already, hadn’t said something. He was still over by the viewports, gazing into the void, his back to the room-

_Click-click-click-click-_

As Thanisson watches, the general flexes the fingers on his right hand, one at a time- onetwothree _four_ \- curling and uncurling them one by one. They make a sharp sound like cracking bone. _Click-click-click-click-_

Thanisson watches General Hux out of the corner of his eye, as if not directly acknowledging it will somehow make it stop.

No one else seems to have noticed the source of the sound. Should he say something? What would he even say? Was there a proper protocol for asking your superior officer if he’d suddenly lost his mind?

_Click-click-click-click-_

_Click-click-click-_

The sudden absence of that fourth beat has the same effect as missing a step when you’re running down a flight of stairs. His stomach lurches. Thanisson realizes, with slow, dawning horror that the general is looking back at him sharply over his shoulder.

 _“Yes,_ officer _?”_

 “N-nothing, sir,” he stammers. “Sorry, sir.”

The general’s lips pull back in a sharp smile, all white teeth and fever-bright eyes. It reminds Thanisson of some holophotos he’d processed for archival once: Stormtroopers who had died of exposure on some windswept ice planet, their faces frozen with teeth bared.

He feels hypnotized; paralyzed with a sudden, leeching fear as the general _smiles_ at him, his neck twisted at such a sharp angle that Thanisson cannot help but wonder, desperately, if it hurts. He can’t bring himself to look away.  
  
“Did you have a question about the duty rosters?” General Hux asks.

Thanisson realizes with a sudden spike of horror that the files are still pulled up on his station, plainly visible from where Hux stands.

“No, sir.” Thanisson fumbles trying to close the files and log off his station. He can feel the weight of sharp green eyes on the back of his neck. “I- I thought I made a transcription error,” he babbles. “But everything’s in order. Sir.”

“Good.” From the sound of it, that smile has returned. Thanisson knows with chilling certainty that he will have nightmares about that smile tonight.

 

 

Before Axaca, she’d only ever seen General Hux smile once before.

She had been awaiting his return from Starkiller base, poised to receive both the general and Lord Ren in the hangar. When their ship touched down, the general had ducked neatly, gracefully, under the overhanging hull of the command shuttle as he exited down the ramp. Lord Ren trailed behind him, mid-sentence- possibly something about the unsuitability of using droids for nonessential tasks- when there was a low thud and a pregnant pause, as he failed to clear the overhang. The instant his helmeted head struck the ship’s hull, Unamo had frozen her features into blank neutrality, her gaze firmly fixed on her datapad, as if her life depended on it. Quite possibly it did. But out of the corner of her eye, she saw the general’s lips curl into a pleased smirk.

It had been a little thing, the smallest twist at the corner of his mouth, and it had dissipated when Lord Ren continued speaking where he had left off, but she had seen it. Held it close like a secret; unequivocal proof that her icy, stiff-backed commander had something as ordinary as a _sense of humor_. Albeit a malicious one.

Chief Petty Officer Unamo watches little Thanisson sweat and stammer, transfixed like prey under the sharp grin General Hux is leveling at him from across the room, and something unconscionably like pity stirs in her heart.

“Sir,” she says, stepping forward before she can reconsider. Up close, she cannot ignore the sour, rotten smell clinging to Hux. It crawls in her mouth, her nose, seems to leech into her very skin. “Could I speak to you about the new combat training requirements for the junior officers?”

The general’s head snaps towards her whipcrack sharp. Unamo could swear she hears his bones crack. Before she can catch herself, she takes a startled half-step back.

She has just enough time for the fleeting, half-mad thought that the man she saw smirk at Kylo Ren’s misfortune in the hanger bay that day is not the same one who stands before her now- this smirk is wrong, all wrong, like someone who's never met him before is doing a bad impression of the general- before that vicious smile dies, replaced by a soft surprise. As if she’d startled him. He blinks, like a man waking up from a dream.

“Come again?” Hux says briskly, shifting to cover up his inattention.

“The new training requirements, sir? If you have time.”

Hux glances around the bridge, as if he expected to find himself somewhere else. The smallest frown line creases between his eyes.

She is just mustering up the nerve to say _are you sure you’re alright, sir_ when he answers. “Yes. Yes, of course. My office in an hour.”

He turns on his heel and walks off before she can so much as give her thanks. The moment the door slides shut behind him with a soft rush, the atmosphere on the bridge seems to lighten. A tension in the air dissipates, bleeding away like the calm after a storm. If the bridge of the _Finalizer_ were not meticulously climate controlled, Unamo would say the temperature rose a solid five degrees.

 

 

Every group of soldiers that serves together develops their own language.

First Order Stormtroopers are no different. Each unit has its own jokes, its own nicknames, references, insults. Some are standard across the ranks. An ‘ellar’ is an idiot- someone who makes a rookie mistake. Everyone knows that LR-designation troopers are a bunch of washouts. There was something in the pud- a synthetic protein mush affectionately referred to as ‘pudding’- when they were kids. An AT-6 is a kiss-ass, someone who’d throw their mates to the rathtars if it made them look good in front of the brass. Onboard the Star Destroyer _Finalizer_ , ‘Feeding Sloop’ is the accepted phrase for using the refresher. _Sloop_ being what some of the ‘troopers had affectionately named the dianoga that lived in the waste disposal systems.

All of this is a necessity as much as a way to pass the time. General Hux actively encouraged it. Soldiers must be able to pass information quickly and discretely, and more than that- each squad of Stormtroopers was a community, a family united by a common language.  
  
When a Stormtrooper on deck patrol in sector twelve comes off duty, tucking his helmet under one arm in order to chug a cup of tepid filtered water from the dispenser in the break room, he asks one of his squad-mates, “What’s wrong with Twofour?”

They both cast a furtive glance at the third figure in the room, a trooper who sits slumped with his head in his hands, staring at nothing with the vacant horror of someone who only _wishes_ that nothing was what they were seeing in the secret space behind their eyes. Like someone who has seen things there are no words for. He is unshaven- a blatant uniform violation- and his eyes are ringed with dark circles. Brittle fear sits on him like a blanket, so palpable it leeches into the room.

“The general was out in the halls again last night.”

Her voice is barely more than a whisper. To anyone else it would be gibberish. To them, it is enough. FN-5443 nods, letting the air in his lungs out slowly, and closes the door quietly, respectfully behind him when he leaves. In the private language of the Stormtroopers who handle rest-cycle security for the decks where the senior officers live, she has said all she needs to say.  
  
  


The kitchen staff on board the _Finalizer_ have noticed a change in the general’s eating habits.

Morlando Pesh, the senior chef in the Officer’s Mess, took pride in his work. If you’re going to do a job, you should do it well, and cooking was what Morlando Pesh did so he knew no other way to do it. He used to despair at the uneaten portions that always came back on General Hux’s plate.

“It’s not right, a man like that living on tea and air,” he would complain, dumping the barely-touched plate in the disposal chute. What was the _point_ in doing his job well if nobody enjoyed the fruits- and vegetables, grilled meats, and desserts- of his labor? There was a reason the senior officers had Morlando Pesh instead of CT-3RRT, the droid that dispensed bland, nutrient-rich protein mush to the Stormtroopers.

But lately, Morlando Pesh has had no cause to complain. Not only do the general’s dinner plates come back licked-clean, he has started showing up for second helpings. Sitting with the junior officers for their meal periods in addition to his own. At first it was cause for pride; many of the youngest had grown up on General Hux’s daily addresses. To be able to sit and eat lunch with the man was something to write home about.

Then pride had shifted to polite amusement. _He’s very hungry today, isn’t he?_

Now the Officers’ Mess is dead-silent save for the dull scrape of knife and fork on plate. Nobody looks up from their tray. A wet sound. Slurping. Sucking. It would be obscene if it wasn’t so uncomfortable.

General Hux tears into the piece of roast bird, abandoning his fork to dig encrusted fingernails into the stringy flesh, pulling with his teeth, shredding it, muscle ripped from bone, and swallowing with a wet _gulp_ that resounds lewdly in the silent room _._ Lips smack loudly. Grease shines on his fingers, his palms, drips down his chin. This goes on for a while. Nobody else touches their food, trapped by discomfort and decorum. When the bird is nothing but bones, which crack under sharp white teeth, he sucks the grease from his fingers, pulling all ten into his mouth one-by-one and _slurping,_ before releasing each one with a wet smack.

The tray scrapes on the table as he pushes it away, seemingly oblivious to the surreptitious glances and awkward silences, and smiles at poor Petty Officer Tido, who had the misfortune to be sitting next to the only empty seat when the general came in. “Are you going to finish that?”

 

  
Captain Phasma has not noticed a change in General Hux, but she has noticed a change in her men.

There are 8,442 of them.

There should be 8,445.  
  
No requests have been filed for shore-leave. The only Stormtroopers in medical are there for illness or routine training accidents. Ordinary. Accounted-for. Even stranger, there have been no departures lately, no shuttlecraft leaving the _Finalizer_ which might harbor a stowaway.

Which leaves only one option. Three of her men are missing.

A Star Destroyer is a durasteel and molybdenum shell, measuring just three-thousand meters from end to end. Vast, but in relation to the unfathomable emptiness that surrounds it, it is a small, insignificant speck of life floating utterly alone in the vast, cold depths of space.

And three of her men are missing from it.

When the latest headcount sent to her datapad stubbornly continues to read _8,442_ , Phasma goes to find General Hux.

“Permission to do a full lockdown and search, sir,” she says without preamble. She could have sent a comm message, but it has always felt more appropriate to speak to her commanding officer face-to-face. The general is in his office, not hunched over his desk for once, but staring out the viewport at the passing of a distant yellow dwarf. He doesn’t turn at her approach. For just a moment the starlight casts a strange flicker across his pale face, making it look like something is shifting just beneath the skin.

“What are you looking for?”

“Three Stormtroopers. FN-5924, FN-9007, and TR-4022. FN-5924 failed to make first headcount during alpha shift. The others have been unaccounted for at least the past three cycles.”

“Three people missing. Oh dear, oh dear. Where have they gone?”

“That’s what I intend to find out, sir.”

“Well there’s only so many places they can be.” He smiles. “Permission granted, captain. While you’re searching, see if you can find my officers. Chief Petty Officer Unamo and Lieutenant Bex didn’t show up for beta shift.” General Hux clicks his tongue loudly, tutting.

Beneath her helmet, Phasma frowns. There was always gossip in any body of men. It was impossible to eradicate entirely, and so it had to be endured. She had paid no more heed to the rumors that General Hux had gone mad than she had to the ones that she was secretly a Zabrak under her armor.

“Yes, sir,” is all she says. The general’s mental state is not her concern. The missing Stormtroopers are. Hux is right- even on a ship three-thousand meters long, there are only so many places to hide.

 

 

Lieutenant Mitaka has noticed a change in the general’s behavior.

General Hux is in one of the private meeting rooms talking to someone when Mitaka approaches from the service corridor. He can hear the low mutter of voices on the other side of the door, and he allows himself just a moment to screw up his courage and straighten the lapels of his uniform. The message he has is top priority. General Hux will want to be informed of it right away.  
  
Still, he doesn’t want to be rude and interrupt. The general has been… on edge lately.

The voices stops when he hits the comm button beside the door. After a moment it slides open.

General Hux is standing in the center of the cavernous meeting room. He turns around as Mitaka enters. Rows of silent, empty chairs face them. 

There’s no one else in the room.

“Yes?” the general prompts.

A HoloConference. That must have been it. There’s no other explanation.

“There’s a message for you, sir.” Mitaka speaks slowly so he doesn’t stammer. He always seems to be tongue-tied around Hux lately. It’s something in his eyes. Were they always so bright? “The Supreme Leader has called for a meeting.”

General Hux approaches him, steady measured steps, closer and closer, stopping only when they are near enough to touch.

He cranes his neck down until Mitaka imagines he can hear his joints creak. Until they are nearly nose-to-nose. For a half-mad moment Mitaka is terrified that Hux is going to kiss him.

The general watches him, unblinking, centimeters from his face. “Go on.” His voice is brisk, professional, belying how incredibly improper this lack of distance between them is. 

“Um…” Mitaka swallows, breathes through his mouth to try and filter out the worst of the blood-and-rot smell that clings to the general. He can feel warm, sour breath on his face, but he doesn’t dare take a step backwards.

There were rumors about the general. Stories filtered down through the ranks and divisions; embellished, certainly. Mitaka has done his best to dismiss them, out of respect for an officer he’s always admired. The general has been on edge lately, that’s all. But now, with that smell, he keeps wondering if underneath that neatly pressed dress uniform there really is a bloody wound- a gaping hole that you can see straight through-  
  
“He-he wants you and Lord Ren-“  
  
The general still hasn’t blinked, not once, and now he is smiling, suddenly, like a switch has been flipped. “Yes?” He says, all white teeth and fever-bright green eyes. Mitaka swallows hard, and doesn’t miss the way Hux’s eyes follow the bob of his throat.

The door to the meeting room slides open. The general’s head snaps to with a sound like cracking bone, and Mitaka lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as a familiar heavy tread approaches them.

Mitaka doesn’t think he’s ever been so glad to see Kylo Ren in his life.

“General Hux,” he says, thankfully ignoring Mitaka. “We’ve been summoned.”

Mitaka tells himself firmly that the low hissing growl he hears coming from the general’s throat at Lord Ren’s approach is a figment of his imagination and nothing more.

“Yes, yes, so I’ve been told. _Thank you_ , Ren,” he bites out, layering a sticky sweetness over the words that doesn’t quite hide the edge to them.  
  
Mitaka steps respectfully backwards and to the side, easing himself out of the general’s oppressive closeness under the guise of clearing the path between them. Kylo Ren waves a hand at him, dismissing, and Mitaka lets out a relieved breath.

“ _Stay_ ,” General Hux snarls, when Mitaka makes the shallowest move to retreat.

Mitaka freezes, feeling for all the world like some soft little prey animal caught in between two predators. That he would be devoured was a certainty, the only question was which one of them would be the one to snap him up. Which would be worse? He knew what happened to people who displeased Kylo Ren.

“I won’t have you ordering my men around, Ren.” The words sound like General Hux, but the intonation is all wrong. Strange and playful and unlike him, as he wags a finger in Lord Ren’s face.

To Mitaka’s surprise, Lord Ren does not rise to the bait.

“Well? Are you coming?” he says to General Hux.  
  
“ _In a minute_.” That awful smile returns, all teeth and bloodless lips.

 “Now,” Lord Ren says firmly. “General. Unless you’d like to explain why you kept Leader Snoke waiting.”

Lord Ren has not so much as glanced at Mitaka the entire time, and yet the lieutenant suddenly has the strangest impression that he is being protected. It is that thought, more than anything- that _Kylo Ren_ felt he needed to be protected from the general- which terrifies him down to his very bones.

If Lord Ren leaves, Mitaka decides quite suddenly, he is going to follow him. He will turn his back on his general and _run._

 

 

Kylo Ren knows there is something wrong with General Hux, although he hasn’t quite given up the belief that if he tries very hard, he can will it to stop being true. It’s childish, like he’s eight-years-old and clinging to a favorite toy to protect him from the darkness in his bedroom, but it’s the only thing he has left.

Till death do us part. But he was never any good at keeping promises.

If can bend men and elements, stars and planets ( _life and death_ ) to his will, he can find a way to fix this, whatever _this_ is that’s gone so wrong with Hux. ( _Not Hux,_ _not anymore_  the little voice in the back of his mind that feels like sensing a lie with the Force whispers treacherously, when that soft voice and cold hands pull at him to come to bed, _now please dearest_ , and most importantly to _leave the lights off._ )

And if he can't.

Well.

 

 

The Stormtroopers who fought at Axaca know that something is very, very wrong with General Hux.

Of the ten surviving soldiers who accompanied Kylo Ren to retake the base after the Resistance attack, eight submitted themselves for immediate voluntary reconditioning.

Another died the following day. A clean shot to the head from her own blaster. The official report listed her death as a ‘weapons malfunction’.

The one who remains will follow her soon. He doesn’t tell anyone what he saw on Axaca. He knows no one would believe him, and it’s all in his debriefing report anyway if they ever care to look.

He does not tell anyone about watching Kylo Ren crumple up a blast door like paper, without ever touching it.

He does not tell anyone that, when they found him on the other side of that door, General Hux had already been dead for hours.

The Resistance blaster that killed him had punched a hole straight through his sternum, so clean that you could see the gray stone of the floor underneath him. His face was frozen in disbelief, scared and painfully young in death.

He does not tell anyone about what he saw Kylo Ren do with the general’s body, after gathering it up carefully in his arms like a child’s broken doll.

They wouldn’t believe him. He barely believes himself. Magic was only supposed to exist in legends.

His teammate is calling from the other side, and he is afraid deep in his bones. He knows what’s waiting there now.

**Author's Note:**

> Hux died before the start of the fic. But he got better. Ish.


End file.
